Keeping Film Alive at Kodak

OK… film sales in motion picture shooting were going down the toilet fast… really fast! BUT at long last someone at KODAK did what I have been telling them to do for years… reach out directly to the people using film in Hollywood and get them to drum up support for the continued use of film in movie making.

“Digital projection is just television in cinema.” – Quentin Tarantino

Making film more visible day-to-day and in it’s use in movies we love (Star Wars, Batman etc…) will draw attention to the fact that it is NOT dead… quite the opposite actually: the best directors in Hollywood use it everyday!

Okay, next: lets take this idea one step further and do the same thing with still shooters. There are so many great shooters using film and almost no one knows about it. And the fact is, we’re all in the same boat- if movie film goes down, so does still film.

Pardon me- I have to write a letter.

Dear KODAK CEO Jeff Clarke…. you’ve taken a great first step, but you can go much further. You need to be shouting these facts from the top of the Kodak building. People love to emulate their heroes! People need to hear these facts and realize that FILM IS A VIABLE OPTION!

Luckily,I have some free time this month to meet with you to go over this idea and several others I have shared with KODAK before your time that would be equally HUGE and remind people that KODAK’s film is still made and still great!

Plus, Kodak’s Vision 3 motion picture film is what made the Portra line possible. If you want Kodak Alaris still film emulsions such as Portra, Ektar, and Tri-X, then we should be addressing Kodak Alaris CEO Ralf Gerbershagen and Dennis Olbrich, head of Personal Imaging rather than CEO Jeff Clark at Kodak. Amazingly, Kodak Alaris groups retail kiosks with their professional film in their organization rather than splitting the products and really concentrating, engaging their film customers the way Lomography, Impossible Project, CineStill and others have had great success. Apparently they see their business future in kiosks and document scanners. Also, Eastman Kodak still manufactures the film on behalf of Kodak Alaris, so the new company has a hard time in retooling and reducing costs for a lower scale of production because Alaris really just has a license to use the Kodak brand and the still films.